“Well, I tried to introduce you to some interesting women back there in District Four.”

Muir laughed aloud. “Speaking of antiquities?”

“Just your style, Professor. A living, walking bone dig.”

“Call me odd, Brandon, but there’s a fascination in being able to measure what’s around you against the context of history. And that’s what we’re seeing. They erect grand monuments at the same time they plow under the ARVN cemeteries. The Romans plowed salt through the soil of Carthage, so that nothing would ever grow there again. Why did they do that? Same principle. Here, the more the communist leaders went to the people and demanded their sacrifices, the greater their burden of proof became that their cause was not simply just, but sacred. A hundred thousand, two hundred thousand, eight hundred thousand, a million—every dead son another warning that if they were not right, if they did not prevail, they would join history’s black pages as the slaughterers of their own people. And so every communist soldier’s death has become a hero’s, elevated to the point of a national religion, while every anticommunist death was traitorous, evil, and without justification. Plow them under. Erase them from history before some new generation comes along and starts thinking otherwise.”

Just past the little town of Dien Ban the road was undergoing an emergency repair. They slowed, watching bent and filthy men and women fitting rocks into place by hand, one by one. Tar was being heated in fifty-gallon barrels at the roadside, over an open flame, and then poured from buckets onto the rocks. The workers wore long-sleeved shirts and the cylindrical straw non la hats usually found in the countryside. Their faces were wrapped in bandannas to keep the smoke and tar out of their lungs.

“Isn’t that amazing,” muttered Muir, watching them. “Individually the people have so much energy, so much resilience. And yet nationally they are so incredibly inept. A brick at a time, a bucket of tar at a time, to fix the national highway. Look at that! One American road crew would have that job done in an hour.”

“But they make great cemeteries, don’t they, Professor?”

“What’s that?”

“Cemeteries. And monuments to themselves. While the cities and the highways fall to shit.”

Muir chuckled softly, watching Condley’s strained face with a gentle patience. “Oh, sometimes I forget, Brandon. I see all of this as predictable, a matter of history playing itself out almost beyond anyone’s control. And you’re always looking for answers.”